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Quick ways to an AA or similar degree online?

I am in the military stationed overseas and want to knock out my associates degree. Its been hard for me to take courses because of being deployed all the time but I want to get it done soon. I have been in the Navy as a Hospital Corpsman for three years and have 2 years left, they gave me like 40k for school...one of these days I want to be a IT manager someday or something similar. I don't care if the degree is in general studies for right now because I would still want to get my bachelors later in information technology.. i would probably need that anyway in additional to certs in experience. I guess the best way to get experience is by volunteering or are there places where you can work very entry level and get experience while they are sending you to school and the contract would be that you owe the company so many years... Anybody know about that? I was wondering if any of you had a good experience with taking online courses and got their degree that way. I was looking at AIU and I heard its pretty quick 5 wk courses and people have known to get the associates degree knocked out in less than a year. I know the school should be somewhat respected school or your credentials wont look that good but I really dont know how that works, military is my first and my current job but I just want to get out asap.. this war on terroism is giving me to much stress..not knowing where ill be in a month because the possiblility of me being pulled to be a combat medic in iraq.. not to safe. Well thanks for reading all this and helping out I hope most of it made sense i was kinda in a rush.

To be absolutely honest I don't put a whole lot of stead in any college degree related to computers... I will give credit for such things as MSCE, CSSIP and other of the "higher end" certifications.

The college degrees, I have always found, are outdated and often seem to be more programming oriented leaving students with little knowledge of the "science" of computers but they have a nice grounding in a ten year old programming language... Maybe I'm a little harsh and others may give you a different perspective... but several years ago I removed the _requirement_ for a college degree, (made it "preferred"), on the job descriptions of all my employees because I found that requiring a degree gave me a thoroughly unqualified batch of candidates once they were interviewed. Many will disagree I'm sure, but the best people in this industry I have known have been self taught... They have the desire to work with the computer... Sufficient to teach themselves a complex and often confusing subject... Too many people with college degrees in computing went there because they were told by some career counsellor that it was a good field to be in... There's no love for the computer in those people, just the desire to get a better salary... That never works when everything goes wrong...

My thoughts...

Don\'t SYN us.... We\'ll SYN you..... \"A nation that draws too broad a difference between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards, and its fighting done by fools.\" - Thucydides

I'm taking courses (including courses in the not-so-old C#, Tiger ) at a heavily accelerated pace (between 15 and 20 credit hours every 8 weeks) - I have been going for a year and a half, and I still have a little less than a year to go. If AIU can get you an associate's in less than a year, there's something phishy... 8 weeks is extremely short for a course, and all you can do is cram in the stuff and hope that it sticks - but 5 weeks?

Don\'t SYN us.... We\'ll SYN you..... \"A nation that draws too broad a difference between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards, and its fighting done by fools.\" - Thucydides

or are there places where you can work very entry level and get experience while they are sending you to school and the contract would be that you owe the company so many years...

I believe the military offer such a 'contract'

As you are a hospital corpsman, try to volunteer at your local hospital ........ Whne you get out natch ......
they all have rather large IT sections

my idea, would be to go through college, aiming to get a degree, but fill in with home study [reading LOTS, Comp TIA A+ and N+ arer very basic, but they are recognised globally.
get CCNA, networking 'puters is where all the REAL troubles, and therefore work, are

you cannot be a jack of all trades in IT as the trades are too many
find one aspect that really 'gets' you
specialise in that area
keep studying
keep reading

as has been pointed out to me by friends in IT :

"you HAVE to stay on top of it, I started in 93, and if I hadn't bothered to improve, the work for a W95 tech would be getting thin on the ground about now"

55 - I'm fiftyfeckinfive and STILL no wiser,
OLDER yes
Beware of Geeks bearing GIF's
come and waste the day :P at The Taz Zone

...

I want a degree just so I have one in case anyone asks or for some reason i have to/want to change career.. Would it be the same/just as good if I just got a general studies associates than got certified in a few things?

this is the course description for the network security class with that school.

I got my Associate From ITT Tech in Networking I think they offer online classes(by location I think). I took acouple of classes online didn't like them to much. The class room experience is alot better(well to me) because we did lots of hands on training. And the online classes just confused ya and no software to play with. My classes weren't out of date they keep pretty current on hardware and software. A couple of people I know attended the Univerisity of Phoeix online and liked the courses.